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Pediatric ICUs
Make Headway
Against Infection

By

Laura Landro

Updated April 18, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET

For the sickest infants and children, pediatric intensive-care units provide the highest level of medical care, treating children after complicated surgeries, severe illness or accidents. But the very catheters, intravenous lines and invasive medical procedures used to keep children alive are also putting them at higher risk of bacterial infection.

Now, with mounting alarm about the high rate of hospital-acquired infections, critical-care specialists are taking new steps to protect the smallest and most vulnerable patients,...